In 2013, Adobe acquired a tag management system that we branded Dynamic Tag Management (DTM). At the time of the acquisition, DTM served 30 customers. Today, DTM serves more than 3,000 customers.

Over the last few years, it’s become an undeniable reality that the proliferation of web-based marketing technology isn’t slowing down — it’s actually accelerating. As a result, the ecosystem of technologies that marketers rely on to deliver the customer experience is also growing. And legacy tag management systems are not capable of supporting this ecosystem.

The same engineers that built DTM spent almost two years developing a next-generation tag management system capable of supporting and unifying the marketing technology ecosystem. This new tag management system is called Adobe Cloud Platform Launch. It’s a revolutionary approach to tag management that enables third-party developers to build, maintain, and continuously update their own integrations with Adobe Experience Cloud across a unified platform that enables all those technologies to work together. Leveraging Launch by Adobe’s app-store-like interface, enterprises can deploy web apps from Adobe and third-party vendors with ease, define the customer behaviors they want to capture, and determine how that data should be used across their digital marketing tools.

Why switching is the smart move.

Upgrading from DTM to Launch by Adobe is about so much more than just keeping up with the newest technology. Here are seven reasons your enterprise should consider making the switch:

1. FASTER DEPLOYMENT: Extension Catalog

With Adobe Cloud Platform Launch, you have easy access to the Extensions you need — integrations built and maintained by the technology providers themselves — in one central catalog. These Extensions enable your site to support more web technologies, and the clean user interface helps both IT and marketers configure and deploy those technologies in less time.

2. STRAIGHTFORWARD UPGRADE: Adaptors

Adaptors enable you to redirect your existing DTM embed codes to point to Launch by Adobe.

When Launch by Adobe was nothing more than black scribbles on a whiteboard, there were two non-negotiable requirements:

• Create a tag manager so open that marketing technology providers can build Extensions.
• Enable DTM customers to upgrade without altering their already-in-place embed code.

Launch by Adobe delivers on both those requirements. Not only does it provide an open platform for Extensions, but it also enables DTM customers to use Adaptors to redirect their embed code to a JavaScript library created from Launch by Adobe instead of DTM.

3. CONSTANT INNOVATION: Third-Party Extensions

Independent software vendors have a virtually self-service way to build, manage, and update their own integrations, which we call Extensions.

Launch by Adobe is the only tag management system that enables marketing technology providers to directly develop and maintain their own integrations. Not only can they alter the user interface of Extensions they built, but they can also add new functionality. For example, marketing technology providers can embed their entire sign-up process or even their SaaS product into their Launch by Adobe Extensions. Now these vendors can dream up new applications, develop new kinds of Extensions, and get their innovation directly into the hands of the enterprises that need them.

4. UNIFIED MARKETING TECHNOLOGY: Rule Builder

Integrate the data and functionality of marketing and ad technologies to unify disparate products.

The rule builder in Launch by Adobe has been completely redesigned to make building and understanding rules easier. And the improvements don’t stop there. The rule builder is actually the nexus of all marketing technologies deployed through Launch by Adobe, providing a central hub where you can unify functionality from one marketing technology with functionality from other marketing technologies.

Figures 1 and 2 show how data from Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, and the page itself are being used to embed a specific YouTube video on a specific web page in real time. This cooperation between various marketing technologies is possible through Extensions. Marketing technology providers can inject new data or functionality into any of the four parts of the rule builder: events, conditions, exceptions, and actions. Because Extensions can add functionality directly to the rule builder, various marketing technologies are no longer cobbled together with custom code, but rather fused together by being built on a common platform.

Figure 1. Setting up a rule.

Figure 2. Selecting and configuring the YouTube Extension as the action.

5. AUTOMATED IMPLEMENTATIONS: Open APIs

Automate baseline implementations of one or many technologies.

The common practice for marketing technology providers is to first build the core product, and then develop APIs on top of that product. Launch by Adobe took a different approach and architected the core product around APIs. Every button clicked, every field populated, every functionality added to the user interface is API driven. This means that anything that can be done within the user interface can be done automatically outside of the user interface.

For example, if your company has the same baseline implementation of Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Foresee, BlueKai, Adobe Target, or re-marketing pixels across each of their domains, then when you launch a new domain, you would typically click through the tag management system’s user interface to deploy each of these marketing technologies. Launch by Adobe enables you to write scripts that leverage the Launch APIs to automatically deploy these technologies. So a process that took days, weeks, or months can now take seconds.

6. ENTERPRISE PUBLISHING: Component-Based Publishing

Publish only what you intend by bundling the rules, data elements, and Extensions that make up a library.

Launch by Adobe uses libraries to determine what is published to development, staging, and production. These libraries are composed of specific components, including rules, data elements, and Extensions selected by the user. This ability to construct, at the most granular level, which components will be published gives enterprises more control, visibility, and security over what changes make it into the production environment. Launch by Adobe’s component-based publishing includes the following:

Cross-user conflict resolution.
Launch by Adobe notifies a user if another user made changes to a rule in a library that they’re in the process of publishing.

Four-stage publishing.
The publishing process allows users to move a library through the four-stage publishing process: Development, Submitted, Approved, and Published. If there are any conflicts within any components in any library, the related users are notified.

Unlimited development environments.
Launch by Adobe gives IT unlimited instances of both development and staging environments so every deployment to the production environment is a confident one.

7. COMPLETE CONTROL: Rights Management

Create rights to publish, add Extensions, access Extensions, and perform a host of other tasks, and then give these rights to users.

Using rights management controls, you can create groups that have very specific rights and then add users to that group. Organizing access around rights instead of users gives your organization an easier way to see who has access to what, and make bulk changes if needed. For example, instead of meticulously combing through each user to find out who can publish, Launch by Adobe allows you to click on the publishing right and see everyone who can publish.

The right tools make all the difference.

Adobe Cloud Platform Launch represents a whole new way to think about tag management. Re-imagined from the ground up, Launch by Adobe not only delivers a more scalable, flexible way for your organization to support current and future web technologies, but it also makes several other aspects of tag management so much easier, including configuring rules, managing rights, and unifying technologies across your digital ecosystem. While you may be satisfied with the functionality that DTM provides today, tomorrow will bring new technologies and complications that first-generation tag management systems can’t support or solve. With Adobe Cloud Platform Launch, your enterprise can begin benefitting from a unified web-technology ecosystem right away.